PUBLIC JESUS, a review: Election Year 2012

Is Jesus an appropriate foundation for Christian ethics, or must we look elsewhere?

Desperate and a bit clueless after my first year in ministry, I enrolled in George Fox Evangelical Seminary in the fall of 1999. One of my first classes was “Christian Ethics” with the primary textbook being, “Mere Morality” by Lewis Smedes. My professor so unapologetically answered the question above with, “Duh! Of course not” that it was never even asked or entertained.

A standard answer for many evangelicals at the time, but I was stunned.

Author Tim Suttle’s answer in his powerful new book, Public Jesus, is equally stunning, though completely opposite. With equal parts creativity and courage Suttle encourages us to base all of life, and all of our ethics, on Jesus. He blows up the “private faith” myth not so much through detailed argument, but by inviting us to believe, and by showing us what faithful daily public witness is.

And you’ll love him for it. Indeed, Suttle is part of a new thriving core of evangelicals who are proudly calling the church to image Christ in life, or, as he refers to it, live “cruciform” lives. I’m utterly thrilled to see this transformation over such a short period of time.

And he’s relentless in his insistence that our faith is both Jesus-centered and public . In the introduction he says, “God belongs in the public square because the public square belongs to God.” He then spends the rest of his work describing what such a cruciform public life looks like: through and at work, in worship and rest, in our public language and in our allegiance.

Public Jesus will challenge you to examine your own faith as he pushes out what it means to live our whole lives as though we actually believe Jesus is Lord. His chapters on vocation, Sabbath, and Eucharist fall slightly short by weakening the tension created early in the book between the publicness and Jesus-ness of our faith. (With his chapters on work and Sabbath not being Jesus-y enough, and Eucharist not being public enough. Regardless, they are still excellent!).

But he’s at his best when fleshing out the decidedly political nature of the Gospel and lifestyle of Jesus. He suggests, following Hauerwas and Yoder before him, that living our shared common life together in cruciformity is a “profoundly political act.” He then contrasts the politics of Jesus with the current American political scene and suggests that “major surgery” is required for we Christians to faithfully follow the Public Jesus.

But is this too-short work up for such major surgery? It’s unlikely that was his intent, though he certainly provides several helpful tools for the work better left to communities than individuals anyway. He helpfully deconstructs “the spectrum” of choices available in the American political scene (Liberal-Conservative, Secularism-Fundamentalism, Democrat-Republican, etc…) and the basic promise from all on the spectrum of potential utopia. Jesus provides us with a core third way, and identifying with Jesus alone is the foundational tool for those whose primary citizenship should be in God’s kingdom and not Caesars’. The book’s true value is in calling us to do the major surgery for ourselves. A task I’d invite you to join me in.

Suttle’s book, like my research paper, would not have passed muster in my evangelical seminary ethics class. But no one’s looking for a grade anyway. What we need to know is does it help us process Christian faithfulness in this complex, multiple-fronts war, corporate-driven, post 9/11 Election Year 2012?

One of the cruciform areas of faith that Tim practices so well, but is limited by the book medium, is community dialogue. So I’ve asked author Tim Suttle to dialogue with us directly. He graciously agreed to help deepen the conversation surrounding the Christian witness to the state, and in particular issues in this election year. My next post will be a dialogue between he and I regarding Election Year 2012 (for more posts on Election year 2012 click here). Before signing off, let me say unequivocally that framing Christian ethics around Jesus and cruciformity is absolutely essential today. Any book that invites us to do so is worth the read.

I recommend Public Jesus to all my readers! Find it here for a great afternoon read. Tim blogs at Paperback Theology and tweets @tim_suttle, which you may love as much as I do. Check them out, then come back next week when Tim addresses the questions posted in the first comment below. Don’t forget to add your questions, and let’s dialogue!

So what do you think? Is Jesus up to the challenge of being the basis of all Christian ethics? What are the tools needed for the major surgery of separating Christianity from American civil religion?